Archives - 30 January 2012, Monday

Cross-posted from Sightline Daily . In the Seattle suburb where I grew up, the main transportation choice most residents face is what kind of car to buy. I moved to the city after college and, inspired by the “car-lite” lifestyles of several friends, decided to give cycling a try. I f...

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This is how corn is planted on industrial-sized farms. (Photo by Minnemom.) When I wrote recently about the next generation of genetically engineered seeds , I was in truth referring to the next next generation. The fact is that the next actual generation of seeds is already out of th...

Bemporad mentioned it on the first trend, but I thought it should get a separate mention. Co-creation will continue to grow in 2012, as companies understand the value of collaboration with consumers in the idea generation phase, while consumers are happy to engage with companies on th...

At the GreenBiz Forum in New York City last week, Ernst & Young offered a preview of fall 2011 survey results of sustainability program and reporting trends at leading companies in 24 sectors. Of the more than 270 respondents, 85 percent are based in the U.S. The session, led by E&Y a...

Bill Gates has a terse response to criticism that the high-tech solutions he advocates for world hunger are too expensive or bad for the environment: Countries can embrace modern seed technology and genetic modification or their citizens will starve … The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundati...

I know next to nothing about sports, but I’m told that a) this is LeBron James, b) he is not normally the bikey kind of athlete, and c) he IS the extremely highly paid kind of athlete who probably owns 20 cars and a “this is where the magic happens” room. So it’s pretty impressive tha...

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With a name and shape more befitting of a salad-topping fruit than an ocean-faring animal, sea cucumbers are arguably one of the most striking species to roam the sea floor -- but their importance to the health of marine ecosystems is proving far more noteworthy than that unfortunate ...

“The radiative forcing of the CO2 we have already put in the atmosphere in the last century is … the equivalent in energy terms to almost half a billion Hiroshima bombs each year.” “Radiative forcing” is the degree to which Earth is warmed by energy produced by the sun and trapped by ...

I’m pulling together some reactions to facets of the much discussed Wall Street Journal op-ed on climate overstatement and wanted to get your reaction to their views of your work…. Here’s the link and the relevant passage: A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale eco...

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On an occasional basis mongabay.com highlights a video or film. Any views expressed in these clips are those of the filmmaker/producer and do not necessarily reflect the views or endorsement of mongabay.com.

Americans generated 11.5 million tons of glass in 2010 – about 27 percent of which was recycled, according to the EPA . Nearly 90 percent of recycled glass is used to make new containers. But creative greenies are finding some slightly more unconventional uses for the material – filte...

Thus the essential underlying policy, albeit not sufficient, is a price on carbon emissions that allows these costs to be internalized within the economics of energy use. The price should rise over decades such that people and businesses can efficiently adjust their lifestyles and inv...

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Apologies for starting off y’all’s Monday mornings on the grossest note possible, but this story was too appalling not to share. In Texas, near Dallas, an amateur drone pilot snapped a pic of a suspiciously red creek. (Weird, we know! But just get past that bit.) The drone pilot decid...

About 40 percent of the 92 million residential thermostats in the United States are programmable, which would be a great thing for energy saving, except that only about 10 million of devices are actually programmed. The problem is that most of the gadgets are too hard to use and peopl...

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A startling video shows an orangutan mother and baby being saved in the nick of time from hunters in Borneo earlier this month. A team from a local orangutan orphanage had been searching the area near a palm oil plantation after reports of systematic killing of the apes. The UK Daily ...

[...] A Greener Life Could Make You Richer News]By admin on January 30, 2012 Tweet A Greener Life Could Make You Richer Money and the environment. You may think that one kind of green has absolutely nothing to do with the other, but that's not entirely true. The very premise of greene...

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On the cusp of its one-year anniversary, the Sustainable Apparel Coalition appointed its first executive director and will start tweaking its Apparel Index rating tool for a mid-year public release. The Apparel Index is intended to help companies understand what's going into their pro...

Note: This is the second article in a series on sustainability and organizational structure that originally appeared on BSR's blog . Read the first article here . In 2005, the Harvard Business Review published a study by Robert Kaplan and David Norton about the disconnect between stra...

Two hundred square feet? SO last year. The newest tiny house folds up to fit in your pocket . Okay, it’s unfurnished, and probably not much of a candidate for permanent residence, but designer Martin Azua’s “Basic House” could be an emergency housing solution — or maybe just an awesom...

Concentrating solar power, the rapidly-growing alternative to photovoltaic power, continues its expansion. A joint venture between two energy companies, one from Spain and one from Abu Dhabi, is set to build 6 GW of new CSP in the next three years in Spain, the US, and the Middle East...

Ready for a little peek behind the editorial decision-making curtain at the Wall Street Journal ? On Friday, the paper published an op-ed disputing anthropogenic global warming , on the strength of its being signed by 16 scientists. Sixteen, wow, that’s a lot! Except that in May 2010,...

"Everyone in this room is sitting on millions of dollars of untapped value -- your employees." So said Ellen Weinreb, the managing director of the Weinreb Group (and the creator of the Talent Show blog on GreenBiz.com), during a One Great Idea presentation at this morning's GreenBiz F...

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According to a bulletin from CASM, The Department of Commerce "will begin collecting duties back 90 days on Chinese imports." According to CASM's public relations group, Oglivy,"This is the first time the Department has ever applied critical circumstances before a preliminary determin...

In 2009 alone, the military consumed some 375,000 barrels of oil per day , more than three-quarters of all other countries on the planet. To put that in perspective, Nigeria — with a population of more than 140 million — consumes about the same amount. During the decades of cheap fuel...

Fox News thinks the Muppets have a bias against oil companies. The Muppets point out they spent the movie DRIVING TO FRANCE IN A CAR (uh, spoiler alert). Also, Miss Piggy does not much care for Murdoch and his enterprises: Seriously, you wanna step to Miss Piggy, Fox News? She just hi...

Volt Owners May Soon Get Charged with Renewable Energy OnStar using Chevrolet Volts in Google's "Gfleet" to demonstrate technology 2012-01-23 DETROIT – Chevrolet Volt electric car owners could soon charge with renewable energy using a new solution from OnStar. The technology is enable...

Despite pressure from media critics to issue a list of demands, or focus on a unified message, the decentralized Occupy Wall Street movement in American has sought to maintain its comprehensive resistance to corporate green in all forms. Throughout the movement’s short history, we’ve ...

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Tesco is considering dropping carbon footprint labels from its products, after reports suggested the supermarket giant is finding the process too expensive and time-consuming. The retailer became the most high-profile supporter of the Carbon Trust's label scheme in 2008 and has since ...

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Twitter is in the proverbial doghouse with many of its users. The social networking giant announced in a blog post on January 27 that it is implementing a policy to “reactively withhold content from users in a specific country—while keeping it available in the rest of the world.” In o...